When Piita Irnik meets Pope Francis in Iqaluit on Friday, he will make a request he has been waiting a lifetime to fulfill.
In August 1958, when he was 11 years old, Irniq was kidnapped from his family home in Naujaat (then called Repulse Bay) on the shores of Hudson Bay and forced to attend school in Chesterfield Inlet.
Like so many other Indigenous students, he suffered terrible abuse. Six decades later, he plans to ask the Pope personally to send one of their alleged abusers, Father Johannes Rivoir, to Canada so he can finally face justice.
“This monster cannot be allowed to get away with what he did to the Inuit children,” Irnik said.
Elders Piita Irnik, in the center, raise an image of Fr. Johannes Rivoir, who is wanted in Canada for abusing children in Nunavut but now lives in France. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang.
Rivoire, a French oblate priest, began working in Nunavut in the 1960s before returning to France in 1993. A few years later, the RCMP issued a warrant for his arrest on multiple charges of sexual abuse.
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But France refuses to extradite its citizens to face charges abroad, and so Rivoire remains free. He is now in his 90s and is said to be living in a home for the elderly in Lyon.
French Oblate priest Johannes Rivoir has been accused of sexually abusing children in Nunavut in the 1960s and 1970s. Handout
Criminal charges against Rivoire were dropped in 2017 after Canada’s public prosecutor’s office concluded there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction. But in March, RCMP in Nunavut announced they had received a new complaint about sexual assaults that allegedly took place in the 1970s, and officers renewed their arrest warrant.
Ottawa said Wednesday it had asked France to extradite Rivoire to Canada.
Ottawa has asked France to extradite Johannes Rivoir to Canada to face sexual assault charges. He is now about 90 years old and is said to be living in Lyon.
“I hope the pope can go to the French government to say, look, he needs to be tried,” said Jack Anouac, a school survivor. In an interview near his home in Iqaluit, he told Global News that if France does not extradite Rivoir to Canada, then “the next best thing would be for him to at least be tried in France.”
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“They are still indicting people who participated in the Holocaust. They’re over 90, some are over 100. You’re still charging them, you see, so it’s the same.”
School survivor Jack Anawak on a boat near his home in Iqaluit in July 2022. Jeff Semple / Global News
The 71-year-old was just nine years old when he was taken from his home in Naujaat and forced to attend school in Chesterfield Inlet.
“I was one of those who was sexually abused. And it took about 30 years before that fact was recognized,” he said.
Anawak later became an MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, and architect of Nunavut’s first public government.
But one of his proudest moments was in the early 1990s, when he became one of the first to speak publicly about sexual abuse by Catholic priests at his former school.
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“There was quite a lot of resistance to it. But we persevered and persevered, and the more we pushed it, the more famous it became.”
Three decades later, Anavak welcomed the pope to his remote northern city. The pope’s visit to Iqaluit was only supposed to last three hours, but survivors said they plan to make every moment count. The pope will be greeted by survivors of the residential schools performing drum dances and throat singing – a celebration of the culture the church tried to destroy.
“We wanted to show that even though there was an attempt to take away our language and culture, we were striving to thrive,” survivor Alexina Kublu said.
At the ceremony, they will light a traditional Qulliq oil lamp in memory of Kublu’s mother, who she remembers standing on the shore near their home near Iglulik, watching as her children were taken away by boat.
An undated photo of Alexina Kublu’s mother, whose five children were taken from her and forced to attend boarding schools. Sent
“And she just stood there for the longest time, just looking away,” Kublu recalled. “And so I said when they started talking about boarding school and how hard it was for them themselves as kids, I said it’s very hard for our mothers as well as our fathers.”
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The Pope is expected to personally apologize for the church’s role in these atrocities. But survivors said his actions in the Rivoir case will speak louder.
School survivors and friends Peter Irnik, Jack Anawak and the late Marius Tungilik. Sent
On Friday, both Irniq and Anawak will be thinking of their late friend and fellow residential school survivor Marius Tungilik. Tungilik also attended the Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School and was allegedly abused by Rivoire. He was deeply traumatized and in 2012, at the age of 55, committed suicide.
“I promised Marius that one day I would do everything I could to help bring Rivoir back to Canada,” Irnik said. “And that’s what I’ve been doing all these years to make sure that his victims will begin to see healing and reconciliation for what was done to them by Rivoir when they were little children.”
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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